Page 129 of Undefined Terms

‘Move,’ I say. ‘Please. I need you to move.’

Celyn moves, slow, out, in. The rhythm that isn’t a rhythm yet, it’s finding itself, like two people find a rhythm when neither of them is pretending they know what comes next. My hips follow, rise. The angle changes and there it is again, the jolt, the nerve, the place that makes the sound come out.

‘Yeah,’ I say. Or moan. The line between the two has gone. ‘Yeah. There. That fuck. That.’

Celyn hooks an arm under my knee, lifts it, changes nothing but the tilt of my hips, and now every stroke finds it. Not deeper. The slant of it. Forward, against the place, on the way in and the way out both. The long drag of Celyn over it and the wire lights and stays lit.

‘There,’ Celyn says, reading it off my face. ‘Stay there. Yeah.’

Celyn’s hand on my cock. The grip, sure, tight, the rhythm matching the movement inside me. Celyn’s face above me and Celyn’s hand on me and Celyn inside me and I’m, I’m held. Held. The way a structure’s held when the frame is right and the weight is distributed and the whole thing stands.

I’m the structure, Celyn’s the frame.

My hand on the back of Celyn’s neck. Pulling down, the mouth. The kiss. Messy, open, teeth and tongue and breath and the stubble scraping and the taste of morning and sleep and underneath. Celyn groans into my mouth and the sound goes straight through me and I feel it in my cock, in my stomach, in the place where Celyn is inside me.

Faster, enough. The headboard tapping the wall. Celyn’s breath getting shorter. The catch in the throat, the one meaning close.

‘Ron. I’m close.’

‘Yeah.’ My hand on the hip. Pulling. Deeper. ‘Yeah. Come on.’

Celyn comes, I feel it. The body going rigid, the thrust that stops being rhythm and becomes force, the grip on my cock tightening, the groan against my neck. Buried there. The vibration through the bone. And even like this, on my back and full of them, I know it was me, my body, that took them over, and the knowing is its own heat.

Celyn keeps moving through it, hand still on my cock, the rhythm uneven now, instinct, and the wire fires again somewhere I can’t track. My cock between us, hard and dripping and the hand working it on the same uneven beat.

‘Come on, Ron.’

Celyn’s voice in my ear. Wrecked.

‘Come for me. Now.’

And I, it’s not the angle or the hand or the sound. It’s the weight. The full weight of Celyn on me and inside me and around me. It breaks out of me, hot, striping my stomach and Celyn’s both, everything the days apart packed into it pouring loose at once. Streaks of it. The part of me that clenched when the fingers left clenches again, harder, around Celyn still inside, the body holding what’s there because the body’s decided it doesn’t want it gone. My mouth on Celyn’s neck. The taste of skin. The salt of sweat. No words.

What’s left is the body doing what the body does when the body finally,

When the body finally comes home.

We don’t move, the weight, the wet. The breathing. Mine fast, Celyn’s slower, the two rates finding each other, evening out.

Celyn pulls out, the condom, the tie.

My legs, shaking. Like after a long pour when the body’s been braced for hours and finally lets go. I look at the ceiling. The cracks, no stars.

Celyn rolls onto the side. Facing me. The hand on my chest, light, fingertips, the heartbeat underneath. Checking.

‘Ron.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Stop staring at my ceiling like it owes you money.’

I laugh. The sound I only make here.

Celyn smiles. Full. The rare one. Four, five times I’ve seen it. The eyes.

‘The novel’s unstuck,’ Celyn says. After a minute. Or five.

‘Yeah?’